FAMILY, PARENT AND COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

FAMILY, PARENT AND COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

Introduction

Parents/ family involvement are an important aspect of early childhood education, which plays an integral role in facilitating childhood development (Morrison, 2011). The basic implication of this is that parents/families should partner with the school on order to foster effective education through encouraging involvement from the perspective of the school or teacher. This paper discusses all the six types of parent/families involvement, which includes parenting, communication, volunteering, learning at home, decision making and communication with the community.

Parenting knowledge and skills is one of the strategies that a teacher can make use to foster parents involvement in childhood education. This can be achieved through offering parenting assistance and skills for child rearing. In addition, understanding child development and the establishment of supportive home environment basing on age and the education level is also important during parenting. Parenting can be implemented through conducting parent-teacher conferences at different times of the academic calendar (Morrison, 2011).

Effective communication between the school and the family is also another effective strategy for guaranteeing parents/family involvement in education. This can be achieved through ensuring that there are effective two-way communication frameworks between the parents and the school regarding the school programs and student performance. Schools should adapt strategies that compel parents to attend and be actively involved in school meetings. An example of an effective way of guarantee parents’ involvement in school meetings is through conducting family-school picnic supper. A number of schools such as Freedom Elementary School in Wisconsin have reported that this strategy is effective in ensuring parents attendance to the school meetings (Kroph & Slentz, 2010).

Parent involvement in child education can also be ensured through the use of volunteering within the school and the larger community. Teachers can achieve this through the enhancement of recruitment, training and activities that involve the families and parents as volunteers and beneficiaries of the volunteering activities undertaken by the school (Kroph & Slentz, 2010). This ensures that there is adequate support for the students and the school initiatives. In addition, parents can be encouraged to be actively involved in volunteering for the library and other school activities. The outcome of parents volunteering in school work is that they serve as role models to the children, which is an effective strategy in enhancing early childhood education.

Teachers should also motivate parents to facilitate student learning while they are at home. This can be achieved through the involvement of the families in the activities that are related to learning by use of home works. In addition, parents have the obligation of making sure that there is a supportive environment to facilitate student learning. An example of a strategy that has proved effective in ensuring student learning at home is through encouraging daily studying when at home, reading out aloud for the parents and supplying pupils with adequate learning materials (Morrison, 2011).

Another effective strategy to ensure parents/families involvement in education is through encouraging parents’ involvement in school decision making processes and advocacy. Parents should be actively involved in the decision making process and governance procedures through avenues such as Parents Teachers Association, School committees and councils. This helps in ensuring that a friendly parents community for the school, making it easy for parents to express their propositions towards the management of the school (Morrison, 2011).

Collaborating with the community is also another strategy that teachers could use in order to ensure parents involvement in childhood education. The school should be actively involved in community undertakings through the coordination of resources and provision of certain services for the community. In addition, the schools can also partner with businesses and other agencies in order to help in the provision of services to the community.

References

Kroph, S., & Slentz, K. (2010). Early Childhood Education: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. New York: Taylor & Francis.

Morrison, G. (2011). Early Childhood Education Today. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.